It was a Brown County Speedway debut that Dayne Kingshott will always remember.
The driver from Bunbury, Western Australia, won his first race in America Friday night, taking the checkered flag in the NOSA Sprint Car feature at the local track.
“It’s cool. It felt like a matter of time. We’ve been building speed here,” Kingshott said. “It’s pretty cool to come and race a really cool race track, like we did tonight. Happy to pick up the win.”
Kingshott flew into Omaha, Neb., came to the Hub City, and then sped his way around the oval to claim the feature win. He trailed for the early part of the race before the leader went over the top between turns one and two, giving the Aussie a lead he never lost.
From there, he was able to navigate around slower cars to beat the field to the finish.
“It was one of the cooler race tracks I’ve race on for a long time. It was very, very cool,” Kingshott said. “It was very technical on the top there. There was a bottom there you could hit for a couple laps if you needed to get around lap cars.”
A caution flag with six laps remaining in the 25-lap race allowed Kingshott a few laps before having to deal with serious lap traffic and he found away through that to secure the victory.
“It’s one of those tracks like I say, you could move around, so the lap traffic’s intense, but you can still get by them,” Kingshott said. “So it was a lot of fun.”
Kingshott, who drives for an American car owner, plans to continue to race in the U.S. this summer.
“It’s good to come race these smaller races and try and build confidence and speed,” he said, “and work on the package we have, to go tackle bigger races later on in the year.”
Dawson Zabel of Selby and Dusty Mund of Lisbon, N.D, won their second straight features at the track.
Zabel waited for the right opportunity and then ducked under Jake Wranek of Sioux Falls with seven laps remaining to win the Midwest Modified feature.
“I just went where they weren’t, I guess. I tried different things,” Zabel said. “I didn’t want to just stay in line behind someone.”
Zabel discovered that the bottom of turns three and four was solid and went there to take the lead.
“On that restart, when Jake went to the top completely, I knew that the bottom of three and four was better,” Zabel said. “That was kind of just handed in my lap there, and I knew I could run the top of one and two and the bottom of three and four, and be a little better.”
Mund won his third Legends feature of the year at BCS. The veteran driver understands that the class is currently full of younger drivers and is trying to lead by example.
“These kids got to learn and hopefully, they’re following my tracks and maybe someday we can be door-to-door here soon,” Mund said.
The North Dakotan trailed TJ Pfeiffer of Aberdeen before taking the lead about halfway through the race.
“TJ Pfeiffer always puts on good competition for me,” Mund said. “He has come a long ways.”
The program was the lone appearance of sprint cars at the track for the season.
It was a homecoming for Brandon Rekow of Ellendale, N.D., who used to be a regular at the track from 2002-2006 and from 2012-2016.
“I started racing bomber cars in Wishek and Aberdeen when I was 13,” Rekow said.
He then got into sprint car racing in North Carolina before returning to Ellendale. Rekow raced in the Late Model division the last time he was a regular at BCS. He said sprint cars are different than Late Models.
“To me they’re a lot faster when they go through the corners. Just a lot more moving components,” Rekow said. “Things happen really quick. You can’t bump anybody at all or you’re going to flip.”
Watertown’s Kinzlee Giessinger just graduated from high school and is in her second season in the sprint car division.
The 18-year-old tried a Late Model once, but prefers a sprint car.
“Definitely the adrenaline rush I get, the speed,” Giessinger said of what she likes about the class. “It’s just a lot more fun to me.”
When asked what her classmates thought of her racing a sprint car, Giessinger responded, “They think it’s pretty cool. They think it’s really dangerous though.”
Is it?
“Yes,” she said, “but so is walking down the street.”
Giessinger has already flipped her car and walked away unhurt.
“It wasn’t too bad,” she said. “I didn’t really see it. I closed my eyes and just held on.”
Racing continues at 7 p.m. Friday with a fireworks display to follow.
To see complete results, click on the following link:
